written by Arjuna da Silva

Learning to live together also means learning from one anothers’ mistakes. Learning to build with low budgets, limited time, and few professionals has been another learning curve. Still, quite a few successes in design and construction remain praiseworthy. Last issue we focused on tiny houses; this issue we look at larger projects that are standing the test of time

Walking down the old, sturdy stairs from the upper apartments in the Bellavia building, I admire the work, however rough and minimal, that was put into the structure all those years ago and modestly improved upon in the ensuing years. I’ve seen the development of this useful, sustainable living and work space that has remained a viable anchor for folks to co-own or rent. Twenty years of intensive use has yielded home and comfort for several families and expansion of the building’s housing is currently underway.

Building at Earthaven has run the gamut from houses like mine (Leela), the Stones’, Julie & Andy’s, VT, the Love House, and (next door at Full Circle) the Broadheads’—all high end for this end of the state road—and salvage-and-mud huts too tiny for two suitcases. I worry about the ones that need better ventilation; anyone can put on another blanket or another log, but the moisture  building materials can absorb is something we all need to pay attention to. There’s a lot to know about healthy bodies and healthy buildings, two streams of sufficiency we began traveling together 24 years ago.

As new folks transition into Full Membership and join pods, the next wave of building will occur for residential  neighborhoods and the commons. Skill, materials, and time will be precious categories. What will allow folks with limited funds, whose savings might be only enough to cover move-in expenses and buy-in costs, to create healthy living space?

VT—a good example

Good things are usually the result of good timing, luck, and some bold creativity. The timing of who had reason to be involved with whom certainly played a key role in the outcome of this vibrant, successful  housing experiment. With two of the three proposed buildings completed, a duplex and a set of apartments, there is room in this pod for expansion! What are the factors most residents base their positive assessments on?

When I think about how short our community lineages have become, I feel the push to help insure that knowledge, know-how, good strategies and ideas, as well as their results are passed along in ways that are usable, not just admired.

Earthaven is a community coming into a new self-awareness with lots of room for aligned individuals, and families to connect. Culture’s Edge is a conduit for projects, programs and practices we value for building mutual support and collective strength.

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Over 30 people participated in a work party in the Bellavia Gardens Neighborhood on Saturday, February 26.

Earthaven members, guests and work exchangers pulled together on beautiful sunny morning to clean up after the construction of “Leela,” the naturally built home of Arjuna da Silva.

Volunteers ranged in age from 5 to 79.

Leela has been a favorite attraction for Earthaven visitors for more than five years. Numerous natural building workshops have been given using Leela as a demonstration site.  Friends came out to put their love into action also by cleaning up and preparing the neighborhood commons for fruit trees and shrubs.

The post Many Hands Make Light Work appeared first on Earthaven Ecovillage.

I walked out to the farm at 7:30 to collect the petals, even though the instructions said to wait till the dew had evaporated. But Andy needed some ice for a few hours’ storage of the day’s harvest, and I figured it would only take another half hour for the sun to capture the dew. Once there, I saw that there was no way the sun’s rays of light or heat were going to reach those roses so soon. I would have to give them at least another hour.

An hour later, of course, I’m in the thick of a focused conversation with a young neighbor who is probably in need of more support for the enormous project he’s taken on than he realizes. (Aren’t we all?!) Then there are two intense phone calls, one after the other — the first from a friend whose husband is almost ready to discard his cancer-wracked body, the second from a neighbor I’ve been trying to get together with for weeks.

The roses! The roses! my thoughts chirp at me in between concentration on the words I’m hearing and saying.

Though it’s almost ten-thirty by the time I get back to the roses, I’m relieved to find it’s still not too hot at the farm. The roses are intensely more fragrant than they were shortly after sunrise! I start at the northeast corner and navigate the rugosas climbing along the fence, looking for the dropped petals that show me which blossoms are ready to focus on their hips and have their petals fully removed.

While gathering petals into my basket, I notice chubby black-and-yellow bees buzzing and hopping from flower to flower, doing their bobbing bee-dance among the pollen-rich pistils and seeming to be especially drawn to the darker pink blooms. Occasionally, my fingers brush their furry backs as I reach over the stems they’ve chosen to reach the ones calling to my harvest-lust. They are totally undisturbed by me, and suddenly I’m aware that we are companions in the same field, doing our modest parts among the fruits of abundance, each participating in the gifts of the rose in our own way. The sun is our companion, too, as are the whistlers and peepers in nature’s symphony that carry on all around us.

Working harmoniously at our own paces, we enjoy the blessings of non-competition: I’m not interested in their pollen, and they don’t seem to need the falling petals.

My intention, not nearly as grand as theirs, is to learn to make rosewater, and then rose oil. A quick Internet search told me there are nutrients in roses which, when applied to the skin or used internally in the right way, have powerful if subtle affects that are not just aromatic. I remember that decades ago I drank rose wine with a friend who got it from her landlady, who made it from the roses that grew in their street garden on a city block in San Franciso. It was delicate and deliciously fragrant.

Today I’ve chosen the simplest of rosewater recipes, seeking to understand the basics of rose processing before I think about how to embellish them. My harvest fills half my largest heat-loving bowl with fresh blossoms that press down to a cup’s worth, and then I pour two cups of boiled springwater over them, teasing the petals under the water with a hand made bamboo spoon. That done, I place a white china plate over the bowl, which sits for twenty or thirty minutes while I start this story. Then it’s time to get a whiff.

Oh, wow — I have two cups of pale raspberry pink rosewater to share and use. Refrigerated, it will keep a week without additives, and a dropperful of good vodka would preserve it for a month. I decide to keep this first batch unadulterated, touching, feeling, sniffing, tasting and rubbing it on my skin, with the intention of using it up within seven days. I fill two half-cup jam jars with it — one for Julie (who, with Andy, consented to let me have the petals), and one to sprinkle on my dying friend.

Next time I go to work among the bees and roses, I will follow instructions for making rose oil, which requires an elementary distilling operation. Using ice and the boiling water to distill the rosewater, the process is supposed to float a fraction of an ounce of rose oil on the rosewater’s surface. Now that’s alchemy! Mixing rosewater and rose oil with other oils and creams that moisturize and nourish could become a regular homemade blessing for those of us enamored of the roses, thanks to Andy and Julie and those friendly, pollinating bees!

Arjuna da Silva is a founding member of Earthaven and of Culture’s Edge. She is a consensus and group process trainer and facilitator, and offers counseling and Alchemical Hypnotherapy to neighbors and friends. Her earth-and-straw building, Leela House, is nearing completion. 

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Bruce, Rudy, Alice, Eva, Julie, Johnny, and Mana have become full members!

Culture’s Edge hosted a wonderful Village Harvest Festival last fall and are looking forward to the second annual festival on October 12, 2009.

Arjuna’s beautiful Leela house is nearing completion and is getting its final coat of interior plaster this summer.

Ivy and Michael celebrated their wedding at Earthaven!

Useful Plants Nursery cleared an area in the old campground for a nursery expansion. The fruit trees have moved in, with many more plants to come.

The Forest Children took their spring play, Fantasia, on the road this spring, performing at the Lake Eden Arts Festival (LEAF).

The Pokeberry building at Village Terraces is complete, with Bob, Debbie, and their two fuzzy house cats in residence. (see article)

Geoff and Debbie cleared a site for an orchard near the new campground and are busy planting apple trees and ground cover crops.

Imani farm has a new Jersey cow named LC (Large Cow), who produces most of the milk for Earthaven. Imani and Yellowroot farms are raising pigs, and three neighborhoods have new bee hives.

At Gateway farm, the five Shetland ewes had nine new lambs, and after completing the Pokeberry building, Brian and Farmer are building new homes for themselves in the Gateway neighborhood.

The post News notes – Spring 2009 appeared first on Earthaven Ecovillage.